The Brext Land

ITV’s Good Morning Britain’s backdrop-countdown to Brexit is a dramatic reminder of what is to come. However, until March 29th we are all of us just speculating, guided by a homunculi Tiresias that lives in ours and others’ ears, themselves just speculating off of the fragments of other speculators spoon fed 24hour news straight out the xth dimensional Brext Land (the land of after), where we can assume the sperm count of 18-40 year old men plummets, birds migrate to cold climes, the Earth’s magnetic field flips on a regular basis, the sun rises in the west and chaos is order, black holes open from our arse holes, rewriting histories, the code of visible, tangible, palpable reality all a sneeze away, and sneezing its way into our cozily accustomed, but ultimately accosted, reality. I have seen some trying to pinch the air, as if they might pry open the façade of reality and get under it to see if everything is running smoothly; some have a hunch that The Brext Land is in this xth dimension, a fingernail-peel away. Visas and viscera, EU and Union Jack flags litter the streets in the post-Megiddo, post-Arthurian Brext Land, straight out of a confused Michael Connelly parody of T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land.

It looks as if April may be set to be “the cruelest month” after all, the snow to help us forget forecast, but Piers Morgan keeps berating everyone with an opinion in Brext Land, other than Nigel Farage, the Fisher King, dangling his rod into the rat infested Thames to fish out potential lads who’ll buy his condoms;— we should take solace that if by some fluke, the putty-ugly-incels do copulate, they’ll not circumfuse their tainted seed, thus fathering mutant waifs with extreme right wing leanings.

Piers is clearly Madame Sosostris, reckoning the fate of the Phoenician sailor Phlebas, who is everyone working pay check to pay check, or on Universal Credit; sinking in or with the economy, depends which angle you look at it; the pedestrian streets of Britain, turned somehow to quicksand. The difference between Piers and Sosostris, is that Piers is a bit retarded (even if he is playing the party of the grumpy old man in the moon), a worn-out know-it-all who has been imbibed with too much power by people who still believe bullying has-beens are what people want to see after waking from nightmares, in which traffic congestion, on the M6, both south and north bound, mounts due to the automated tariff booths of Dover overheating, going haywire and murdering lorry drivers by beating them over the head with their barriers, leaping to the price of bread inflating physically and chlorinated chickens clucking instructive, motivational messages while they (the dreamer) is trapped on a giant treadmill, scoffing their faces with tepid, Canderel® sweetened porridge before their morning ablutions to scrub out the stain of their Leave vote. But no, Piers must be there, counting down, holding everyone (but Nigel Farage) to account, folding his arms to hold his rib cage in place, because his blood pressure is so high he fears his heart leaping our his chest. But nothing to fear, he’s stocked a garage full of ACE inhibitors, Angiotensin, Calcium blockers and Thiazide diuretics, so he can carry on full plum-faced-throttle till well into June. A patriot, a prick.

I picture T.S. Eliot, bowler-hatted, bowdlerized in real-time due to the invective of his assessment of the Brexit debacle, doing his own parody of himself, for the Daily Mail, ironically, or not so much—pretty sure he’d be a Times or Daily Mail subscriber. As our politicians increasingly prove they are not amply qualified, they more and more resemble the asexual Tiresias, not the ailing monarch they’d prefer to be (especially the besieged Maybot, inorganic, put together with nuts, bolts and jam from one of Boris Johnson’s sandwiches, in a bank vault in the Internet, which is about to be ransacked) so entangled in the health of their nation, the land turns to squalor and fetid, dies. There is a child asking why all politicians look like a bread pudding, which someone with abnormally large hands has left handprints in.

But this isn’t what I see. Everyone is checking their Fitbit to tally up 10,000 steps a day. The news is reporting that we should be eating 4 grams of red meat a day. People are walking. I walk round the woodland daily and see multitudes pacing through pine woods, jogging, nattering, being pulled by great hounds; sniffing and snorting (the people, not the hounds) and I join them, trying to sniff out the bull-crap loitering in the high pressure from the Atlantic.

What Eliot would realize in his parody is that the leader is only a talking point, someone to point and blame, but who only indirectly affects the well-being of the nation. Nobody really gives a toss about them. They are insignificant, incidental to Netflix, pints of craft ale, rhubarb gin and tonic, weekly haircuts, a sense of self-importance, potpourri farts and the under-whelming realizations that everything will probably be ok; no Tiresias (the job everyone really wants) warning us of fear in handfuls of dust; only the media heaping up broken images, the Bradford millionaire realizes he is poor in London, and probably has flu. And this is how it should be, right? No one caring really, everyone drunk in one of Tim Martin’s pubs, eating fish n’ chips till the oceans are empty. Rule Brittania, marmalade and jam, na na nananananana naaaa naaaaaaaaaaaaaa nanaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we shall have a game of chess, except the Knight confuses us, and though we have a queen, why can’t the king move about more? We’d probably be better off if it was all chess, at least only clever people, people who are patient play chess.

John Bercow’s voice is hoarse from taking lunch orders and from smoke inhalation because the friction between everyone in Parliament has set his ermine aflame. He’s been fannying about trying to get so and so (the constituency MP from Acrington) to stop harassing the DUP and from making inappropriate jokes about vicars and the androgyny of their kind so as to seem less intimidating to the man on the street, who by the way just wants to eat his avocado toast and read The New Statesman aloud to his colleagues so they’ll throw pennies at him violently. A Labour backbencher hectoringly shouted down the Theology of his speech by appealing to the Existential Crisis of our times: “4grams of red meat a day!?”

I hear birds in Brext Land, but only hardy birds, with bovine biceps for wings, making them heavier, but also, strong enough to spark out stork-like Jacob-Rees Mogg, who isn’t worried about Brexit as he’ll deliver babies with his Stork Jet and comes to this realization when he’s doing a spot of Sunday gardening, where everything he grows, he grows to death. He laughs a sinister laugh, rubbing his claws together.

We may not see the sun much in Brext Land but we trust it is there, the weather man is the voice of thunder—“DA!” And we know “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata” are enviable, are solutions for stabilizing a salvation, are secret words that will bring sunlight and rain. We have to speak them and believe when we say them, and pronounce them correctly, else, well, how can the gods of Brext Land know what we want and make our ailing leaders salubrious again? I am getting the custard pies ready, never know when they’ll be handy.

“Our
Lords thou pluckest me, O Lords thou pluckest me out, me!” Says every single
person in Britain at once, leading to an earthquake of sighs.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

After living in Korea for shy a decade, I find myself back in England, penalized for my turned back, awaiting a move to Exeter, where I will study an MA in English, with focus on environmental studies. These days I am reading inveterately, owing to my no longer living without the means to buy books & books & books. My reading interest lie in contemporary philosophy, ecology, ecological philosophy, object orientated ontology & speculative realism. These ideas are leaching into my poetry & essays.

Post navigation

41 Comments

Hitting your stride, I see, despite (or, perhaps due to?) the move to England. Ah, yes, Brexit—the British equivalent of Trumpland (ie. the visible movement of the Puppeteer behind the curtain). “Where do we go from here?” (as intoned by songsters of every generation post moon landing) is the question we fear ask, facing future. But, as you hint somewhere in the piece: it may not turn out to be as bad as can be expected. (Where was that? On second purview, I can’t seem to find that brief moment of acquiescence I detected.) But, there just the same. Hope is all we have left in this world, isn’t it?
Good to see you back in the saddle.

Access to plenty of newspapers & crap TV brings the cynic out of me & satire is just so fun to write, so fun it is almost cheating.
I think the paragraph beginning “What Eliot would have…” may be the section where I mention something on it not being as bad as we like to think it will be. I mean, it’s always going to have been a bad idea, but we are prone to overheating the drama of things.
I am probably going to write more of these pieces, keep a sharp eye out.

The thing about Brexit is, well, none of us has a crystal ball. It would be supremely ironic if it all went smoothly, the waters were calm on the other side of the isthmus, and the boat didn’t sink. Leaving would still have been the marginally worse decision – the UK will find itself on the wrong side of EU regulations and will have no say in the matter but, on the bright side, will be able to rename itself ‘Englandia’.

There are certainly going to be hiccups. I think it could be the beginning of the end for the UK & we may very well become Englandia with the Union Jack seen in the same way as the Confederate flag.
The lawmakers will have a fun time though either scraping or picking from the long list of EU laws from the last 30 or 40 years. Hopefully Piers Morgan will get so incensed on TV he’ll bust a nut right out the front of his pinstripes. No crystal balls, lots of drama; glad to be back in the UK.

It is not my opinion at all… but I will bet there are a LOT of people in a lot of countries who will feel their ancestors are being avenged if Britain spirals into chaos. If it all goes to crap then I would like to thank you all before hand for the generous bounty you have given the world: Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, JAPAN (the new wave band), Grace Jones, The Cure, Led Zeppelin, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Alan Partridge, Father Ted, Black Books, Black Adder, Stewart Lee, Peter Cook, Ridley Scott, Patrick Stewart, Anthony Hopkins, and on and on the list goes.

Well, I wasn’t there for all that, so all I can do is be grateful for the many blessings that England/Britain/the UK has rained down upon me for decades. I mean come on… The Police!!!!! The ‘Synchronicity’ album? The ‘Houses of the Holy’ album by Led Zeppelin? “Seconds Out” by Genesis? Life for discerning rock fans can be defined as before and after hearing those records! “Synchronicity 2” by The Police is the coolest rock song ever written. I used to have a bootleg of the Police playing in Japan on their 1981 tour. It was an absolute juggernaut. Even a semi-laid back tune like “The Beds’s Too Big Without You” was epic.

To each their own. I love Led Zeppelin like crazy, but I can see how people would dislike what they did. Folky/blues/rock is certainly not for everyone, and Zeppelin have probably been overplayed on classic rock radio at this point.

To please a girlfriend, I once promised to listen to everything Led Zep had ever recorded. I fulfilled my promise at one track per day. That’s time I will never get back! It was utter tedium. How such good musicians (and they are) can create such drivel is beyond me. As for Robert Plant, I gnashed my teeth down to the gums listening to his endless Schreigesang. Just saying. The rest of your list’s not bad.

Interesting. A friend and I once listened to everything Zeppelin recorded in one day. It took all day and we drank beer and sang along and reminisced about the good old days. It was fantastic. “DriveL” LOL! You really don’t like Zeppelin.

I like the eccentric & rare. Anything unexpected. I am somewhat limited in a way as music needs to overwhlem me with its unexpected-ness. My current interest are Swans, especially the album ‘To be kind’ it is blowing my mind.

The song “To Be Kind” itself is rather epic! I don’t think that you are limited by your desire/need for being overwhelmed by music. It is what it is. I can listen to lots of different things, but I spend a lot of time listening to the band Meshuggah, which is an overwhelming wave of very well crafted music. I love adrenaline in music and so do you? 🙂

One can never fully anticipate every possible effect of such socio-economic actions. There is always some unexpected benefit or drawback, and in this case it just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. If foreign companies start reducing or cancelling major investment deals, that could be bad for the UK. But then again I know exactly nothing about European politics in the sense I haven’t lived in the UK or EU so I don’t have a real ground feel for what is occurring. There could be some huge tax benefit or something.

People used to say that the early steam trains were bad because they went over 50 miles and hour and women’s bodies weren’t able to go that fast without their uteruses falling out… so maybe Brexit is not the economic bogeyman.

British politicians are happy to take risks because we are a strong economy & we’re Britain. I worry how long the thread of this will continue to hold currency on the International scene. We are all of us speculators, even the politicians.

I still find it funny how monarchists love the idea of Britain and its royal family… a group of Germans who named themselves after Windsor castle during World War One, then went on to fight WW2 against an Austrian who everyone still thinks is German! Ahhh, world history… non-stop consanguinal marriage and war!

The fourth Black Adder series really nailed the “dark silliness” (poignancy) of how good, common people got caught in the process and were slaughtered like cattle for the fevered dreams of warmongers. As always Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry were great in their roles, but I was really blown away by Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson’s ability to use the pathos of their characters to highlight that very idea of war being a brutal meat grinder for the lower classes, and a kind of global “sport” (wine and maps) for the elites.

“ There, I am desperately free and naive; but knowing this oh dear happiness, dear misery; there is no distinctive sign except that one tearing one’s heart, and a smile destined to nobody(...)" E.Stachura